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"Those who still maintain that the subject of klezmer music and klezmorim is too slight to merit serious scholarly inquiry should take a good look at this fine collection of essays. This book debunks certain misconceptions about klezmer. One is the long-held belief that practitioners of klezmer were quaint but musical illiterates. The other is that this is an effort to take a musical art form off the shelf to be preserved as a museum piece with little contemporary life of its own. I am also delighted by those sections that deal with the Yiddish verbal expression of the klezmer idiom. Klezmer is not just an avenue of maintaining cultural roots without the necessity of learning a language, as portions of this this book so well illustrate."â¿¿Theodore Bikel, recording artist and actor